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The Music in It

Saturday, October 29, 2016

With Halloween just a couple of days away, masks and their particular psychology seems an appropriate subject for this week's poems—not literal masks, but the emotional and psychological variety.

In ancient Celtic times, people believed that they needed masks as protection against evil spirits that appeared around All Hallows’ Eve. Masks are still popular, and this time of year is characterized by every kind of mask from Snow White and Elvira the Vampire to Robin Hood andFreddy Krueger. However, there are masks that people wear year round that are psychological masks to protect themselves from various insecurities.

At one point or another, we all fear revealing our true selves, and so we hide behind masks of seeming indifference when we care too much, anger when we’ve been hurt, bullying when we feel we have no power, wearing expensive or outré clothing when we feel inferior, and outward shows of success when things like jobs and marriages are failing. Just as children (and many adults as well) do on Halloween, we all (from time to time) mask who we really are and take on a sense of being something other than our true selves. The “masks” we wear protect us from our vulnerabilities.

This week’s prompt deals with acknowledging a “mask” you’ve worn at some point in your life (past or present) to hide your true feelings from others, to hide something imperfect about yourself from the rest of the world, to make yourself feel better about something going on in your life, to hide emotional scars, or to help you move forward.

Guidelines:

1. Begin by thinking about times you've worn a metaphorical "mask." Then, on paper, generate a simple list of those times.

2. Look at your list and pick a time to write abut (only one time). 3. Consider the emotional reasons you wore a mask, reasons you felt a need to hide your true feelings from someone (or several "someones").4. How did you hide who you were or might become? What was the nature of your "mask?"5. Here’s a formula for starters, which may be helpful. Remember that this to get you started if you’re not sure how to begin—you’re not bound to this in any way.

Line 1 (or more): Set the scene or time.

Line 2 (or more): Identify who else figures in the “story.”

Line 3 (or more): What happened to make you feel a need to hide something?

Line 4 (or more): What was it like behind your mask?

Line 5 (or more): How different are the masked you and the real you?

Line 6 (or more): How did you (or perhaps you haven’t) let the mask drop?

6. After you've worked your poem into a form that feels close to finished, give it some time away and then come back to it. Read it out loud. Edit and tune it.

Tips:

When you start writing, you might consider using paragraph form. This may develop into a prose poem, or you may wish to work out lines after you’ve drafted the paragraph(s).

Saturday, October 15, 2016

I’m sure many of you
have copies of Diane Lockward's The Crafty Poet
(published in 2013, and reissued in 2016 in a revised edition) in your poetry libraries. Well, there’s great news! Diane and Terrapin Books recently came out with The Crafty Poet II—a companion to Crafty I and another substantial
volume packed with craft tips, poems, and much more. This companion to Volume I
is similarly designed with the same cover and the contents divided into
sections. Each of the ten sections in Crafty II “include three craft tips, each provided by an
experienced, accomplished poet. Each of these thirty craft tips is followed by
a model poem and a prompt based on the poem. Each model poem is used as a
mentor, again expressing the underlying philosophy of the first book that the
best teacher of poetry is a good poem. You will find that the model poems
receive more analysis than in the first book and that the prompts are a bit
more challenging. Each prompt is followed by two Sample poems, which suggest
the possibilities for the prompts and should provide for good discussion about
what works and what doesn't. Each section includes a Poet on the Poem Q&A
about the craft elements in one of the featured poet's poems. Each section
concludes with a Bonus Prompt, each of which provides a stimulus on those days
when you just can't get your engine started.”

In order to give you a small sampling of the new
book, Diane Lockward is our guest blogger this week with a prompt that
addresses the process of revision (and we all know how challenging effective revision can be). The suggestions posted here are only some of those in the book.

________________________________________________

From The Crafty Poet II , Craft Tip #29 – Making
More of Revision by Diane Lockward

During
revision discussions, we poets hear a lot about
compression, reducing clutter, and cutting out the non-essential. Who hasn’t
sat in a poetry class or workshop and been told that less is more? So when someone tells us to add more, to expand, to
keep going, we might be hesitant to pay attention.

But
we should pay attention. The less-is-more principle is often good advice, but
it’s not always good advice. As I
once heard Mark Doty say, Sometimes more
is more.

Too
often we start revising and hacking away at the poem before it’s even fully
written. We quit before we’ve given the poem life, before we’ve discovered its
full potential, before we’ve found its real material.

Stephen Dunn
addresses the topic of revision in a 2007 interview in The Pedestal Magazine:

A
fairly new experience that I’ve been having is revision as expansion. Most of
us know about revision as an act of paring down. Several years ago, in looking
at my work, I saw that I was kind of a page or page and a half kind of poet,
which meant that I was thinking of closure around the same time in every poem.
I started to confound that habit. By mid-poem, I might add a detail that the poem
couldn’t yet accommodate. That’s especially proven to be an interesting and
useful way of revising poems that seem too slight or thin; to add something put
an obstacle in. The artificial as another way to arrive at the genuine—an old story,
really.

Before
you begin to strip down your poem or abandon it as no good or decide it’s good
enough as it is, first consider how you might expand your poem. The following
expansion strategies just might help you to discover your poem’s true potential
and arrive at the genuine.

1.Choose a single poem by someone
else, one that has strong diction. Take ten words from that poem and, in no
particular order, plug them into your own draft. Make them make sense within
the context of your poem, adjusting your context as needed. Or let the words
introduce an element of the strange, a touch of the surreal.

2.Find the lifeless part of your
poem. This is often the part where your mind begins to wander when you read the
poem aloud. Open up space there and keep on writing in that space. Repeat
elsewhere if needed. Remember that freewriting can occur not only while
drafting but also while revising.

3.Find three places in the poem where
you could insert a negative statement. Then go into the right margin of your
draft and write those statements. Add them to the poem. By being contrary, you
might add depth and richness to the poem.

4.Put something into your poem that
seemingly doesn’t belong, perhaps some kind of food, a tree, a piece of
furniture, a policeman, or a dog. Elaborate.

5.Midway or two-thirds into your
poem, insert a story, perhaps something from the newspaper, a book you’ve read,
a fable, or a fairy tale. Don’t use the entire story, just enough of it to add
some texture and weight to your poem. Your challenge is to find the connection
between this new material and what was already in the poem.

Now
go into your folder of old, abandoned poems, the ones you gave up on when you
decided they just weren’t going anywhere. Then get out some of your recent
poems that feel merely good enough, the ones that never gave you that jolt of
excitement we get when a poem is percolating. Finally, return to some of the
poems that you’ve submitted and submitted with no success, those poor rejects.

Mark
all of these poems as once again in
progress. Now apply some of the expansion strategies and see if you can
breathe new life into the poems. Remember that this kind of revision is not a
matter of merely making the poem longer; it’s a matter of making the poem
better.

________________________________________________

Many
thanks to Diane for this “taster” from The
Crafty Poet II.

Like Crafty I, this
new volume is an invaluable resource for poets, teachers, and students—

Friday, October 7, 2016

It is with a sense of profound personal loss that I share with you the sad news that Gail Fishman
Gerwin, who wrote last week’s prompt for us, passed away on Monday, October 3rd after months of treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Gail was one of my dearest
friends.

Some of you will remember Gail from previous prompts
and posts. She was a gifted poet who took special joy in sharing poetry with
others, and she touched countless lives with her love and her words.

Gail is survived by her husband of 48 years, Dr. Kenneth S. Gerwin; her
daughter, Karen Gerwin, son-in-law, Michael Stoopack, and grandchildren Ben and
Liv Stoopack; her daughter Kate Goldberg, son-in-law Dean Goldberg, and
grandsons, Jordan and Brandon Goldberg; she is also survived by a sister, Carol
Miller.

(Gail & Ken Gerwin)

(Gail & Ken's Daughters, Karen & Kate)

(Gail & Her Much-Loved Grandchildren: Jordan, Liv, Brandon, and Ben)

A native of Paterson, NJ, Gail received her
bachelor's degree from Goucher College in 1961, where she was Phi Beta Kappa.
She was an elementary school teacher in Ridgewood, NJ, and then took a job
in the public relations department at NYU Medical Center. After raising her
daughters, she worked in the public relations department at Sea Land and, in 1984, established her own freelance writing/editing firm, inedit (Morristown,
NJ). Also a dog breeder, Gail spent many years devotedly breeding championCairn Terriers. She taught her first Cairn, Schepseleh Darling, to say "Mama," and Gail loved her Cairn Terriers so much that when she established her own poetry press, she used her kennel name and called the press ChayaCairn: www.chayacairnpress.com.

In
addition to her beloved dogs, Gail had a deep and abiding respect for wildlife
and the natural world: squirrels, bunnies, chipmunks, the goldfinches and
hummingbirds that came to her feeders, the turkeys that paraded through her
neighborhood, and even a vagrant pigeon who took up residence in her yard. Her
delight in "all creatures great and small" was very much a part of who she was.

(Gail and Eliza Jane at a Blessing of
Pets, the Pigeon,

Turkeys on Parade in Gail’s Neighborhood, and Goldfinches at Gail's Feeder)

Gail was a Renaissance woman of the highest order. In
1996, she earned her master's degree in creative writing from NYU, where she
studied with Ann Hood and discovered an abiding love for writing poetry. Her first book (a poetry memoir), Sugar and Sand, was a 2010
Paterson Poetry Prize finalist; her second book, Dear Kinfolk, received a 2013 Paterson Award for Literary
Excellence. Her
poem “A State in Mind” was a third-prize winner in the 2015 Allen Ginsberg
Poetry Awards. Her most recent book,
Crowns, was published in 2016. Her poetry, book reviews, short fiction,
essays, and plays have appeared in a wide range of print journals and anthologies, in online literary journals, and on stage. Among numerous other readings, Gail performed several times in the Carriage House Poetry Series, reading her own work and portraying both Sylvia Plath (November 2015) and Dorothy Parker (June 2013).

(Above & Below: Gail as Sylvia Plath in the Carriage House Production "A Legacy of Words.")

In addition to being a close personal friend, I had
the privilege of working with Gail for Tiferet
Journal, which she served for several years as associate poetry editor. She
loved presenting workshops, giving readings, and sharing her love of poetry
with audiences of students, seniors, and every age in between. She was generous and caring, always ready to think of
others before herself; her intelligence and quick wit were graced by a wonderful laugh. More
than anything else, she loved spending time with her family, often gifting
family members with poems that she wrote especially for them.

In a LitBridge interview, Gail said of her poems, “I
write. Others create visual art. Others share through conversation. It is
crucial for me to record my story and to pass a legacy to the next generation
and hopefully to reach a larger readership able to identify with my
experiences, which are not unique but simply there in a different costume. Like
many, I didn’t ask enough questions when my parents were alive and I regret it
but I have found documents, letters, and many photos, and have used these to let
my children and grandchildren know who I was and how I felt about this and how
I feel about them. I began this process with my first book Sugar and Sand and
continue to add narratives to their collection. I also wanted to provide a
sharp sense of place and to project the warmth that memories allow.”
(Source: http://www.litbridge.com/2013/03/13/gail-fishman-gerwin-next-big-thing-interview/)

Years ago, shortly after meeting Gail, I asked her
how she became interested in poetry. Without
hesitating for a second she said, “Because I want to leave my girls and my
grandchildren something more than memories—I want them to have something of me
to hold after I'm gone.” Gail did exactly that through her poems and her books.

By way of sharing, here are links to some of Gail’s poems. (Click on each to read.)

Saturday, October 1, 2016

and I'm pleased to share it with you this week—with many thanks to Gail.

Write a
Narrative Fibonacci

Several years ago, I was fortunate to receive an
invitation to read at the Barron Arts Center’s PoetsWednesday in Woodbridge,
NJ. The series offers workshops prior to the features and open readings.
Luckily, that evening renowned poet Joe Weil facilitated a lesson on how to
write a Fibonacci, a poetic form named for 13th century
mathematician Leonardo Pisano, later known as Fibonacci. That night’s workshop
dealt with one form of Fibonacci. The formula:

First line – one
syllable or word

Second line – one
syllable or word (0 +1, sum of previous two lines)

Third line – two
syllables or words (1+1, same pattern)

Fourth line – three
syllables or words (1+2)

Fifth line – five
syllables or words (2+3)

Sixth line – eight
syllables or words (3+5)

Seventh line – thirteen
syllables or words (5+8)

Then reverse:

Eighth line – eight
syllables or words

Ninth line – five
syllables or words

Tenth line – three
syllables or words

Eleventh line –
two syllables or words

Twelfth line – one
syllable or word

Thirteenth line – one syllable or word

The finished product: an interesting-looking narrative.

I preferred the word count to the syllable count. I
chose a television show of my youth, starring Milton Berle, a comedian; it was
live television in black and white. Families would gather in some lucky
person’s living room at 8 p.m. on Tuesday nights (not everyone owned even a
single TV) to watch.

Many early television sets were made by a company
named Dumont. The screens were small but the laughs were large. Some skits were
extremely silly, like when Milton called “make-up,” someone would come out and
smack him in the face with a big powder puff and he always acted surprised. You
can see an example of this on an old Donny and Marie YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT4m2D_Aan8)
at about minute 3:07 (+/-).

When I received Joe’s prompt to compose a Fibonacci
with the above formula about something in my past, I thought of Uncle Miltie,
as he was called with affection. One feature of the show involved an ad for the
Texaco gas company, where service-station attendants sang a jingle that began
“We are the men of Texaco, we work from Maine to Mexico . . . Everyone watching
knew this song and could sing along. Hence the mention of Texaco men in the
poem below. I like to put dialogue in italics, not quotation marks.

Slapstick Fibonacci

Uncle

Miltie,

Tuesday nights.

Whack! Maaaaaaaakeup. Hilarity.

Dust flies on the set.

Oh no, who turned the sound way down?

Fix it Daddy.I can't. Just go to bed, there's always next week.

There it goes, Ben, it's on
again. Whew.

Can I stay up, Mommy,

‘til Texaco men?

Why not?

Dumont

Works.

After that summer evening, when Joe introduced me to
the form, everyone in my family received Fibs as birthday poems. Muse-Pie
Press’s The Fib Review, an online
literaryjournaledited by Mary-Jane Grandinetti, published that one and another I wrote about my obsession with
the style.

WELCOME!

THE MUSIC IN IT

"The Music In It" is a blog for anyone interested in poets and poetry—the craft and the community.

The title comes from Countee Cullen, who wrote: "My poetry, I should think, has become the way of my giving out whatever music is in me."

Look for a new prompt or guest blogger every week or every other week, usually posted on Saturdays, and check the archives for older prompts and posts. Be sure to click on the poetry-related links in the sidebar.

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“Traditional haiku, environmental haiku, psychological haiku, spiritual haiku—Adele Kenny has done them all. Her haiku are spare and powerful, always nuanced with rich symbolism. Her images and juxtapositions make readers hold their breath in wonder.” (Malachy McCourt, Author of A Monk Swimming)

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I’ve worked as a guest poet for numerous agencies, have twice been a featured reader in the Dodge Poetry Festival, and my awards include two poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, the 2012 International Book Award for Poetry, and the Distinguished Alumni Award (Kean University). My book, A LIGHTNESS, A THIRST, OR NOTHING AT ALL, is a 2016 Paterson Prize finalist. In March of 2012, I was appointed Poet Laureate of Fanwood, NJ by the Borough Mayor and Council.
A former professor of creative writing in the College of New Rochelle’s Graduate School, I’m founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor for Tiferet Journal. I give readings and conduct both agency-sponsored and private poetry workshops.

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ON THE TIP OF YOUR TONGUE

Ever find yourself in the middle of a poem and unable to find that one perfect word? Here's the link for a site that provides synonyms, antonyms, related words, similar sounding words, and much more. Easy to use!